Competency Statement Essay

To ensure a well-run, purposeful program that is responsive to participants needs. The observation tool that I have provided for Resource V is used to assess the developmental growth in Discovery Preschool children. It is designed to assist teachers in observing, recording and understanding a child’s skills, knowledge, behavior and accomplishments. It allows both parents and teachers to understand what children know and can do. Assessments are completed every fall, winter and spring with parent-teacher conferences to follow. Parents and teachers use these conferences to discuss the assessment. Observation and documentation are important parts of program management because it allows parents and teachers to discuss what children are learning and understanding. There are five areas that are assessed; physical and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches toward learning, language and communication skills and cognition/ general knowledge. Teachers use these assessments to record progress over time. It allows them to see how each child is developing which area, if any, parents and teachers need of focus more on. It also helps teachers provide developmentally appropriate lessons and materials for the children. I ensure that I am accurately and objectively observing and tracking each child’s developmental and learning progress by providing lesson plans that are developmentally appropriate. The assessment is not completed by testing the children. I use my observations and collect classwork don by the children to assess them. I also constantly interact with the children and set up activities that enable the children to demonstrate specific skills and integrate them into everyday activities. For example, while outside with the children, I will play catch with the children. I will observe if they  can catch, throw, and kick a ball. I also ask them various questions throughout the day like, â€Å"What color is the school bus?† or â€Å"Can you tell me what shape this cracker is?† I record all my observations on index cards and place each one in the child’s portfolio. Assessments are a very important tool for both parents and teachers to monitor a child’s know ledge and development. With this documentation parents and teachers can work together to guide children into becoming well- rounded individuals.

On the Value of a Degree in the Philippines Essay

The employment chances of a fresh college graduate is only 4 in 10, with only 1 in that 4 attaining work relevant to one’s course. Even in light of the unprecedented growth of 6. 6% in GDP over the last year, the labor sector fails to follow suit in what economists characterize as a â€Å"job-shedding† growth. So where does a college degree place us? With the increased pressures on the youth to attend college, many consider the existence of a higher education bubble. The concept hypothesizes, in part, that movements in factors such as tuition payments and unemployable graduates severely decrease the rate of return to a college degree up to a point where it is rendered useless. In the case of the Philippines, effective capping of tuition fees to relatively affordable rates, spaces us from a bubble as of yet. However, it is to be stressed that with everyone jumping in the college wagon all at once – as is apparent now– we will soon find college degrees as no more useful than scratch, and then the true bubble begins. There are too many college graduates. All college students should be aware that although a degree does open doors it loses much of its value as more and more people achieve this accolade. In 2012, a total of 517,425 college students graduated and entered the labor force. With another half a million expected to graduate in March this year, there is increasing concern on their place in the labor market. The number of graduates increase over the years, however jobs increase terribly less, if they increase at all – 882,000 jobs were reported to have disappeared in 2012. Since too many people compete for the same job, employers can afford to lower wages or increase qualifications as much as possible. This is apparent in the over qualification of some jobs – now supermarket baggers or janitors are expected to have had some years of college or even graduated the same, as opposed to the minimum of high school undergraduate in most other countries. College courses are insufficient or incompatible with jobs offered in the market. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) holds job and livelihood fairs across the country, recently offering a total of 360,777 job vacancies. But on a nationwide count only 5,101 job applicants were hired on the spot. In another attempt, the government posted in its Phil. JobNet website 230,000 jobs but only 117,000 applied. Apparently, the jobs created by the government are inconsistent with what graduates believe they deserve or were trained for in those four or more years of education. To add, even once employed underemployment lingers – tainting up to about 7. 2 million job matches – with insufficient base pay as main culprit. Nearly everyone believes a college education is essential. In our society, the college degree has been stigmatized as the best and surest – and sometimes only – path to take in preparation for one’s career. This is contestable however as evidenced in European countries where entrepreneurship and technical education are much more popular and profitable paths than college. The Philippines doesn’t necessarily lack these options, (i. e. TESDA) rather we lack awareness and social approval for these said alternatives. Solutions De-emphasize the necessity of a college degree. The higher education system of countries like Germany, remain stable and un-depreciated, since non-professional or non-corporate jobs are highly popular and equally regarded with college education. Removing the stigma of a college degree can relieve pressure on prices and rates of return to higher education. Therefore, introducing and popularizing technical courses – which are actually highly demanded – can solve much of the Philippine labor problem. Redesigning colleges and curriculums to incorporate in-demand jobs. Supply may be easier adjusted to cope with the requirements of demand, rather than the other way around. Close association with firms accompanied by an overhaul of course curriculums to better suit the needs of employers can effectively reduce mismatch. Administrators and faculty should understand the factors at work in how their programs are depreciating since if the market for college degrees becomes over-saturated we will all pay the price of meaningless degrees and poor opportunity for many in the workplace. Many experts and opinions point to the government’s futile efforts at job creation (i. e. demand) as the main antagonist in this story. However, the equally policy-relevant yet rarely focused upon supply side of labour may offer other, more easily interceded directions. Solving the Philippines’ problems on labour is a tall order however attacking from all sides – both demand and supply – can better efforts towards the nationwide goal of inclusive growth. Reference: Higher Education Bubble Will Burst, May 3, 2011 http://www. usnews. com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/2011/05/03/higher-education-bubble-will-burst, Accessed February 11, 2013 The Value of a Degree, May 06, 2011 http://www. popecenter. org/commentaries/article. html? id=2517, Accessed February 11, 2013 Joblessness: How deep, what needs to be done?, February 06, 2013. http://www. bworldonline. com/content. php? section=Opinion&title=Joblessness:-How-deep,-what-needs-to-be-done? &id=65457, Accessed February 11 ,2013 For inclusive growth: Jobs with higher wages, February 9, 2013 http://www. philstar. com/opinion/2013/02/09/906642/inclusive-growth-jobs-higher-wages, Accessed February 11 ,2013 Oversupply of Unemployable Graduates, January 23, 2010 http://planetphilippines. com/migration/a-disastrous-oversupply-of-unemployable-graduates, Accessed February 11 ,2013 Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics Commission on Higher Education.

Feminist Approach to Witchcraft; Case Study: Miller’s the Crucible

Title: Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading Author(s): Wendy Schissel Publication Details: Modern Drama 37. 3 (Fall 1994): p461-473. Source: Drama Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center. Document Type: Critical essay Bookmark: Bookmark this Document Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage LearningTitle Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading [(essay date fall 1994) In the following essay, Schissel offers a feminist reading of The Crucible, in an effort to deconstruct â€Å"the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death. ] Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a disturbing work, not only because of the obvious moral dilemma that is irresolutely solved by John Proctor's death, but also because of the treatment that Abigail and Elizabeth receive at Miller's hands and at the hands of critics. In forty years of criticism very little has been said about the ways in which The Crucible reinforces stereotypes of femme fatales and cold and unforgiving wives in order to assert apparently universal virtues. It is a morality play based upon a questionable androcentric morality.Like Proctor, The Crucible â€Å"[roars] down† Elizabeth, making her concede a fault which is not hers but of Miller's making: â€Å"It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery,†1 she admits in her final meeting with her husband. Critics have seen John as a â€Å"tragically heroic common man,†2 humanly tempted, â€Å"a just man in a universe gone mad,†3 but they have never given Elizabeth similar consideration, nor have they deconstructed the phallologocentric sanctions implicit in Miller's account of Abigail's fate, Elizabeth's confession, and John's temptation and death.As a feminist reader of the 1990s, I am troubled by the unrecognized fallout from the existential humanism that Mille r and his critics have held dear. The Crucible is in need of an/Other reading, one that reveals the assumptions of the text, the author, and the reader/critic who â€Å"is part of the shared consciousness created by the [play]. â€Å"4 It is time to reveal the vicarious enjoyment that Miller and his critics have found in a cathartic male character who has enacted their exual and political fantasies. The setting of The Crucible is a favoured starting point in an analysis of the play. Puritan New England of 1692 may indeed have had its parallels to McCarthy's America of 1952,5 but there is more to the paranoia than xenophobia–of Natives and Communists, respectively. Implicit in Puritan theology, in Miller's version of the Salem witch trials, and all too frequent in the society which has produced Miller's critics is gynecophobia–fear and distrust of women.The â€Å"half dozen heavy books† (36) which the zealous Reverend Hale endows on Salem â€Å"like a bridegro om to his beloved, bearing gifts† (132) are books on witchcraft from which he has acquired an â€Å"armory of symptoms, catchwords, and diagnostic procedures† (36). A 1948 edition of the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), with a foreword by Montague Summers, may have prompted Miller's inclusion of seventeenth-century and Protestant elucidations upon a work originally sanctioned by the Roman Church. Hale's books would be â€Å"highly misogynic† tomes, for like the Malleus they would be premised on the belief that â€Å"‘All witchcraft comes from carnal lust which in women is insatiable. ‘†7 The authors of the Maleus, two Dominican monks, Johan Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, were writing yet another fear-filled version of the apocryphal bad woman: they looked to Ecclesiasties which declares the wickedness of a woman is all evil †¦ there is no anger above the anger of a woman. It will be more agreeable to abide with a lion and a dr agon, than to dwell with a wicked woman †¦ rom the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die. (25:17, 23, 33) The Crucible is evidence that Miller partakes of similar fears about wicked, angry, or wise women; even if his complicity in such gynecophobia is unwitting–and that is the most generous thing we can accord him, a â€Å"misrecognition† of himself and his reputation-conscious hero John as the authors of a subjectivity8 which belongs exclusively to men–the result for generations of readers has been the same.In Salem, the majority of witches condemned to die were women. Even so, Salem's numbers were negligible9 compared with the gynocide in Europe: Andrea Dworkin quotes a moderate estimate of nine million witches executed at a ratio of women to men of as much as 100 to 1. 10 Miller assures us in one of his editorial and political (and long and didactic) comments, that despite the Puritans' belief in witchcraft, â€Å"there were no witchesà ¢â‚¬  (35) in Salem; his play, however, belies his claim, and so do his critics.The Crucible is filled with witches, from the wise woman/healer Rebecca Nurse to the black woman Tituba, who initiates the girls into the dancing which has always been part of the communal celebrations of women healers/witches. 11 But the most obvious witch in Miller's invention upon Salem history is Abigail Williams. She is the consummate seductress; the witchcraft hysteria in the play originates in her carnal lust for Proctor. Miller describes Abigail as â€Å"a strikingly beautiful girl †¦ ith an endless capacity for dissembling† (8-9). In 1953, William Hawkins called Abigail â€Å"an evil child†;12 in 1967, critic Leonard Moss said she was a â€Å"malicious figure† and â€Å"unstable†;13 in 1987, June Schlueter and James Flanagan proclaimed her â€Å"a whore,†14 echoing Proctor's â€Å"How do you call Heaven! Whore! Whore! † (109); and in 1989, Bernard Dukore suggested that â€Å"if the ‘strikingly beautiful' Abigail's behaviour in the play is an indication, she may have been the one to take the initiative. 15 The critics forget what Abigail cannot: â€Å"John Proctor †¦ took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! † (24). They, like Miller, underplay so as not openly to condone the â€Å"natural† behaviour of a man tempted to adultery because of a young woman's beauty and precociousness, her proximity in a house where there is also an apparently frigid wife, and the repression of Puritan society and religion. Abigail is a delectable commodity in what Luce Irigaray has termed a â€Å"dominant scopic economy. 16 We are covertly invited to equate John's admirable rebellion at the end of the play–against the unconscionable demands of implicating others in a falsely acknowledged sin of serving that which is antithetical to community (the Puritans called that antithesis the devil)–with h is more self-serving rebellion against its sexual mores. The subtle equation allows Miller not only to project fault upon Abigail, but also to make what is really a cliched act of adultery on John's part much more interesting.Miller wants us to recognize, if not celebrate, the individual trials of his existential hero, a â€Å"spokesman for rational feeling and disinterested intelligence† in a play about â€Å"integrity and its obverse, compromise. â€Å"17 Mary Daly might describe the scholarly support that Miller has received for his fantasy-fulfilling hero as â€Å"The second element of the Sado-Ritual [of the witch-craze] †¦ [an] erasure of responsibility. â€Å"18 No critic has asked, though, how a seventeen-year-old girl, raised in the household of a Puritan minister, can have the knowledge of how to seduce a man. The only rationale offered scapegoats another woman, Tituba, complicating gynecophobia with xenophobia. ) The omission on Miller's and his critics' p arts implies that Abigail's sexual knowledge must be inherent in her gender. I see the condemnation of Abigail as an all too common example of blaming the victim. Mercy Lewis's reaction to John is another indictment of the sexual precociousness of the girls of Salem. Obviously knowledgeable of John and Abigail's affair, Mercy is both afraid of John and, Miller says, â€Å"strangely titillated† as she â€Å"sidles out† of the room (21).Mary Warren, too, knows: â€Å"Abby'll charge lechery on you, Mr. Proctor† (80), she says when he demands she tell what she knows about the â€Å"poppet† to the court. John is aghast: â€Å"She's told you! † (80). Rather than condemning John, all these incidents are included to emphasize the â€Å"vengeance of a little girl† (79), and, I would add, to convince the reader who is supposed to sympathize with John (or to feel titillation himself) that no girl is a â€Å"good girl,† free of sexual knowledge, that each is her mother Eve's daughter.The fact is, however, that Salem's young women, who have been preached at by a fire and brimstone preacher, Mr. Parris, are ashamed of their bodies. A gynocritical reading of Mary Warren's cramps after Sarah Good mumbles her displeasure at being turned away from the Proctor's door empty-handed is explainable as a â€Å"curse† of a more periodic nature: But what does she mumble? You must remember, Goody Proctor. Last Month–a Monday, I think–she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you remember it? 58) The â€Å"girls† are the inheritors of Eve's sin, and their bodies are their reminders. Though, like all young people, they find ways to rebel–just because adolescence did not exist in Puritan society does not mean that the hormones did not flow–they are seriously repressed. And the most insidious aspect of that repression, in a society in which girls are not considered wome n until they marry (as young as fourteen, or significantly, with the onset of menses), is the turning of the young women's frustrations upon members of their own gender.It is not so strange as Proctor suggests for â€Å"a Christian girl to hang old women! † (58), when one such Christian girl claims her position in society with understandable determination: â€Å"I'll not be ordered to bed no more, Mr. Proctor! I am eighteen and a woman, however single! † (60). Paradoxically, of course, the discord only serves to prove the assumptions of a parochial society about the jealousies of women, an important aspect of this play in which Miller makes each woman in John's life claim herself as his rightful spouse: Elizabeth assures him that â€Å"I will be your only wife, or no wife at all! (62); and Abigail makes her heart's desire plain with â€Å"I will make you such a wife when the world is white again! † (150). To realize her claim Abigail has sought the help of vood oo–Tituba's and the court's–to get rid of Elizabeth, but not without clear provocation on John's part. Miller misses an opportunity to make an important comment upon the real and perceived competitions for men forced upon women in a patriarchal society by subsuming the women's concerns within what he knows his audience will recognize as more admirable communal and idealistic concerns.The eternal triangle motif, while it serves many interests for Miller, is, ultimately, less important than the overwhelming nobility of John's Christ-like martyrdom; against that the women's complaints seem petty indeed, and an audience whose collective consciousness recognizes a dutifully repentent hero also sees the women in his life as less sympathetic. 19 For Abigail and Elizabeth also represent the extremes of female sexuality–sultriness and frigidity, respectively–which test a man's body, endanger his spirit, and threaten his â€Å"natural† dominance or needs.In order to make Abigail's seductive capability more believable and John's culpability less pronounced, Miller has deliberately raised Abigail's age (â€Å"A Note on the Historical Accuracy of This Play†) from twelve to seventeen. 20 He introduces us to John and Abigail in the first act with John's acknowledgement of her young age. Abby–the diminutive form of her name is not to be missed–is understandably annoyed: â€Å"How do you call me child! † (23). We already know about his having â€Å"clutched† her back behind his house and â€Å"sweated like a stallion† at her every approach (22).Despite Abigail's allegations, Miller achieves the curious effect of making her the apparent aggressor in this scene–as critical commentary proves. Miller's ploy, to blame a woman for the Fall of a good man, is a sleight of pen as old as the Old Testament. There is something too convenient in the fact that â€Å"legend has it that Abigail turned up late r as a prostitute in Boston† (â€Å"Echoes Down the Corridor†). Prostitution is not only the oldest profession, but it is also the oldest evidence for the law of supply and demand. Men demand sexual services of women they in turn regard as socially deviant.Miller's statement of Abigail's fate resounds with implicit forgiveness for the man who is unwittingly tempted by a fatal female, a conniving witch. Miller's treatment of Abigail in the second scene of Act Two, left out of the original reading version and most productions but included as an appendix in contemporary texts of the play, is also dishonest. Having promised Elizabeth as she is being taken away in chains that â€Å"I will fall like an ocean on that court! Fear nothing† (78)–at the end of the first scene of Act Two–John returns to Abigail, alone and at night.The scene is both anticlimactic and potentially damning of the hero. What may have begun as Miller's attempt to have the rational Jo hn reason with Abigail, even with the defense that Elizabeth has adjured him to talk to her (61)–although that is before Elizabeth is herself accused–ends in a discussion that is dangerous to John's position in the play. Miller wants us to believe, as Proctor does â€Å"seeing her madness† when she reveals her self-inflicted injuries, that Abigail is insane: â€Å"I'm holes all over from their damned needles and pins† (149).While Miller may have intended her madness to be a metaphor for her inherent evil–sociologists suggest that madness replaced witchcraft as a pathology to be treated not by burning or hanging but by physicians and incarceration in mental institutions21–he must have realized he ran the risk of making her more sympathetic than he intended. Miller is intent upon presenting John as a man haunted by guilt and aware of his own hypocrisy, and to make Abigail equally aware, even in a state of madness, is too risky.Her long speech about John's â€Å"goodness† cannot be tolerated because its irony is too costly to John. Why, you taught me goodness, therefore you are good. It were fire you walked me through, and all my ignorance was burned away. It were a fire, John, we lay in fire. And from that night no woman dare call me wicked any more but I knew my answer. I used to weep for my sins when the wind lifted up my skirts; and blushed for shame because some old Rebecca called me loose. And then you burned my ignorance away. As bare as some December ree I saw them all–walking like saints to church, running to feed the sick, and hypocrites in their hearts! And God gave me strength to call them liars, and God made men to listen to me, and by God I will scrub the world clean for the love of Him! (150)22 We must not forget, either, when we are considering critical commentary, that we are dealing with an art form which has a specular dimension. The many Abigails of the stage have no doubt contributed to the unacknowledged view of Abigail as siren/witch that so many critics have.In Jed Harris's original production in 1953, in Miller's own production of the same year (to which the later excised scene was first added), and in Laurence Olivier's 1965 production, Abigail was played by an actress in her twenties, not a young girl. The intent on each director's part had to have been to make Abigail's lust for John believable. Individual performers have consistently enacted the siren's role: The eyes of Madeleine Sherwood, who played Abigail in 1953, glowed with lust †¦ [but] Perhaps the most impressive Abigail has been that of Sarah Miles in 1965. A â€Å"plaguingly sexy mixture of beauty and crossness† †¦Miles â€Å"reeks with the cunning of suppressed evil and steams with the promise of suppressed passion. â€Å"23 Only the 1980 production of The Crucible by Bill Bryden employed girls who looked even younger than seventeen. Dukore suggests that Bryden's solution to th e fact that John's â€Å"seduction of a teenage girl half his age appears not to have impressed [critics] as a major fault† was â€Å"ingenious yet (now that he has done it) obvious. â€Å"24 Abigail is not the only witch in Miller's play, though; Elizabeth, too, is a hag. But it is Elizabeth who is most in need of feminist reader-redemption.If John is diminished as Christian hero by a feminist deconstruction, the diminution is necessary to a balanced reading of the play and to a revised mythopoeia of the paternalistic monotheism of the Puritans and its twentieth-century equivalent, the existential mysticism of Miller. John's sense of guilt is intended by Miller to act as salve to any emotional injuries given his wife and his own conscience. When his conscience cannot be calmed, when he quakes at doing what he knows must be done in revealing Abigail's deceit, it is upon Elizabeth that he turns his wrath: Spare me! You forget nothin' and forgive nothin'.Learn charity, woman. I have gone tiptoe in this house all seven month since she is gone. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house. (54-55) What we are meant to read as understandably defensive anger–that is if we read within the patriarchal framework in which the play is written–must be re-evaluated; such a reading must be done in the light of Elizabeth's logic–paradoxically, the only â€Å"cold† thing about her.She is right when she turns his anger back on him with â€Å"the magistrate sits in your heart that judges you† (55). She is also right on two other counts. First, John has â€Å"a faulty understanding of young girls. There is a promise made in any bed† (61). The uninitiated and obviously self-punishing Abigail may be excused for thinking as she does (once again in the excised scene) that he is â€Å"singing secret hallelujahs that [his] wife will hang! † (152) Second, John does retain some tender feelings for Abigail despite his indignation.Elizabeth's question reverberates with insight: â€Å"if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt, would you falter now? I think not† (54). John has already admitted to Abigail–and to us–in the first act that â€Å"I may think of you softly from time to time† (23), and he does look at her with â€Å"the faintest suggestion of a knowing smile on his face† (21). And John's use of wintry images of Elizabeth and their home in Act Two–â€Å"It's winter in her yet† (51)–echoes the imagery used by Abigail in Act One. 25 John is to Abigail â€Å"no wintry man,† but one whose â€Å"heat† has drawn her to her window to see him looking up (23).She is the one who describes Elizabeth as â€Å"a cold, snivelling woman† (24), but it is Miller's favoured imagery for a stereotypically frigid wife who is no less a witch (in patriarchal lore) than a hot-blooded sperm-stealer like Abigail. Exacerbating all of this is the fact that John lies to Elizabeth about having been alone with Abigail in Parris's house; Miller would have us believe that John lies to save Elizabeth pain, but I believe he lies out of a rationalizing habit that he carries forward to his death. Miller may want to be kind to Elizabeth, but he cannot manage that and John's heroism, too.Act Two opens with Elizabeth as hearth angel singing softly offstage to the children who are, significantly, never seen in the play, and bringing John his supper–stewed rabbit which, she says, â€Å"it hurt my heart to strip† (50). But in the space of four pages Miller upbraids her six times. First, John â€Å"is not quite pleased† (49) with the taste of Elizabeth's stew, and before she appears on stage he adds salt to it. Second, th ere is a â€Å"certain disappointment† (50) for John in the way Elizabeth receives his kiss. Third, John's request for â€Å"Cider? made â€Å"as gently as he can† (51) leaves Elizabeth â€Å"reprimanding herself for having forgot† (51). Fourth, John reminds Elizabeth of the cold atmosphere in their house: â€Å"You ought to bring flowers in the house †¦ It's winter in here yet† (51). Fifth, John perceives Elizabeth's melancholy as something perennial: â€Å"I think you're sad again† (51, emphasis added). And sixth, and in a more overtly condemning mood, John berates Elizabeth when he discovers that she has allowed Mary Warren to go to Salem to testify: â€Å"It is a fault, it is a fault, Elizabeth–you're the mistress here† (52).Cumulatively, these criticisms work to arouse sympathy for a man who would season his meal, his home, and his amour, a man who is meant to appeal to us because of his sensual awareness of spring's erotic promise: â€Å"It's warm as blood beneath the clods† (50), and â€Å"I never see such a load of flowers on the earth. †¦ Lilacs have a purple smell. Lilac is the smell of nightfall† (51). We, too, are seasoned to believe that John really does â€Å"[aim] to please† Elizabeth, and that Elizabeth is relentless in her admonishing of John for his affair, of which she is knowledgeable.It is for John that we are to feel sympathy when he says, â€Å"Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband more† (54). Miller has informed us of several ways in which Elizabeth could improve herself. Neil Carson claims that â€Å"Miller intends the audience to view Proctor ironically† in this scene; Proctor, he says, is â€Å"a man who is rationalising in order to avoid facing himself,† and at the beginning of Act Two â€Å"Proctor is as guilty as any of projecting his own faults onto others. 26 While I find much in Carson's enti re chapter on The Crucible as sensitive a criticism of the play as any written, I am still uncomfortable about the fact that a â€Å"tragic victory† for the protagonist27 necessarily means an admission of guilt for his wife–once again, it seems to me, a victim is being blamed. No critic, not even Carson, questions Miller's insistence that Elizabeth is at least partly to blame for John's infidelity. Her fate is sealed in the lie she tells for love of her husband because she proves him a liar: â€Å"as in All My Sons,† says critic Leonard Moss, â€Å"a woman inadvertently betrays her husband. 28 John has told several lies throughout the play, but it is Elizabeth's lie that the critics (and Miller) settle upon, for once again the lie fits the stereotype–woman as liar, woman as schemer, woman as witch sealing the fate of man the would-be hero. But looked at another way, Elizabeth is not a liar. The question put to her by Judge Danforth is â€Å"Is [present tense] your husband a lecher! † (113). Elizabeth can in good conscience respond in the negative for she knows the affair to be over. She has no desire to condemn the man who has betrayed her, for she believes John to be nothing but a â€Å"good man †¦ nly somewhat bewildered† (55). Once again, though, her comment condemns her because an audience hears (and Miller perhaps intends) condescension on her part. The patriarchal reading is invited by John's ironic response: â€Å"Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer! † (55). What seems to be happening is that Goody Proctor is turned into a goody two-shoes, a voice of morality. Why we should expect anything else of Elizabeth, raised within a Puritan society and a living example of its valued â€Å"good woman,† escapes me.I find it amazing that the same rules made but not obeyed by â€Å"good† men can be used to condemn the women who do adhere to them. The other thing which Miller and the criti cs seem unwilling to acknowledge is the hurt that Elizabeth feels over John's betrayal; instead, her anger, elicited not specifically about the affair but about the incident with the poppet, following hard upon the knowledge of Giles Corey's wife having been taken, is evidence that she is no good woman. Her language condemns her: â€Å"[Abigail] is murder! She must be ripped out of the world! † (76).Anger in woman, a danger of which Ecclesiastes warns, has been cause for locking her up for centuries. After Elizabeth's incarceration, and without her persistent logic, Miller is able to focus on John and his sense of failure. But Elizabeth's last words as she is taken from her home are about the children: â€Å"When the children wake, speak nothing of witchcraft–it will frighten them. She cannot go on. †¦ Tell the children I have gone to visit someone sick† (77-78). I find it strange that John's similar concerns when he has torn up the confession– "I have three children–how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold my riends? † (143)–should be valued above Elizabeth's. Is it because the children are boys? Is it because Elizabeth is expected to react in the maternal fashion that she does, but for John to respond thus is a sign of sensitive masculinity? Is it because the communal as defined by the Word is threatened by the integrity of women? And why is maintaining a name more important than living? At least alive he might attend to his children's daily needs–after all, we are told about the sad situation of the â€Å"orphans walking from house to house† (130). 9 It would be foolish to argue that John does not suffer–that, after all, is the point of the play. But what of Elizabeth's suffering? She is about to lose her husband, her children are without parents, she is sure to be condemned to death as well. Miller must, once again, diminish the threat that Elizabeth offers to John's martyrdom, for he has created a woman who does not lie, who her husband believes would not give the court the admission of guilt â€Å"if tongs of fire were singeing† her (138).Miller's play about the life and death struggle for a man's soul, cannot be threatened by a woman's struggle. In order to control his character, Miller impregnates her. The court will not sentence an unborn child, so Elizabeth does not have to make a choice. Were she to choose to die without wavering in her decision, as both John and Miller think she would, she would be a threat to the outcome of the play and the sympathy which is supposed to accrue to John.Were she to make the decision to live, for the reasons which Reverend Hale stresses, that â€Å"Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it† (132), she would undermine existential integrity with compromise. I am not reading another version of The Crucible, one which Mi ller did not intend, but rather looking at the assumptions inherent in his intentions, assumptions that Miller seems oblivious to and which his critics to date have questioned far too little.I, too, can read the play as a psychological and ethical contest which no one wins, and of which it can be said that both John and Elizabeth are expressions of men and women with all their failings and nobility, but I am troubled by the fact that Elizabeth is seldom granted even that much, that so much is made of Elizabeth's complicity in John's adultery, and that the victim of John's â€Å"virility,†30 Abigail, is blamed because she is evil and/or mad. I do want to question the gender stereotypes in the play nd in the criticism that has been written about it. Let me indulge finally for a moment in another kind of criticism, one that is a fiction, or more precisely, a â€Å"crypto-friction† that defies â€Å"stratifications of canonical thought† and transgresses generic boun daries of drama/fiction and criticism. 31 Like Virginia Woolf I would like to speculate on a play written by a fictional sister to a famous playwright. Let us call Arthur Miller's wide-eyed younger sister, who believes she can counter a scopic economy by stepping beyond the mirror, Alice Miller.In Alice's play, Elizabeth and John suffer equally in a domestic problem which is exacerbated by the hysteria around them. John does not try to intimidate Elizabeth with his anger, and she is not described as cold or condescending. Abigail is a victim of an older man's lust and not inherently a â€Å"bad girl†; she is not beautiful or if she is the playwright does not make so much of it. Her calling out of witches would be explained by wiser critics as the result of her fear and her confusion, not her lust.There is no effort made in Alice's play to create a hero at the expense of the female characters, or a heroine at the expense of a male character. John is no villain, but–as a nother male victim/hero character, created by a woman, describes himself–â€Å"a trite, commonplace sinner,†32 trying to right a wrong he admits–without blaming others. Or, here is another version, written by another, more radical f(r)ictional sister, Mary Miller, a real hag. In it, all the witches celebrate the death of John Proctor.The idea comes from two sources: first, a question from a female student who wanted to know if part of Elizabeth's motivation in not pressing her husband to confess is her desire to pay him back for his betrayal; and second, from a response to Jean-Paul Sartre's ending for the film Les Sorcieres de Salem. In his 1957 version of John Proctor's story, Sartre identifies Elizabeth â€Å"with the God of prohibiting sex and the God of judgment,† but he has her save Abigail, who tries to break John out of jail and is in danger of being hanged as a traitor too, because Elizabeth realizes â€Å"‘she loved [John]. † As the film ends, â€Å"Abigail stands shocked in a new understanding. â€Å"33 In Mary Miller's version Elizabeth is not identified with the male God of the Word, but with the goddesses of old forced into hiding or hanged because of a renaissance of patriarchal ideology. Mary's witches come together, alleged seductress and cold wife alike, not for love of a man who does not deserve either, but to celebrate life and their victory over male character, playwright, and critics, â€Å"‘men in power' †¦ ho create and identify with the roles of both the victimizers and the victims,† men who Mary Miller would suggest â€Å"vicariously enjoyed the women's suffering. â€Å"34 Notes 1. Arthur Miller, The Crucible (New York, 1981), 137. The play was originally published in 1953, but all further references to The Crucible are to the 1981 Penguin edition, and will be noted parenthetically in the text. 2. June Schlueter and James K. Flanagan, Arthur Miller (New York, 1987), 68. 3. Neil Carson, Arthur Miller (New York, 1982), 61. 4. Sandra Kemp, â€Å"‘But how describe a world seen without self? Feminism, fiction and modernism,† Critical Quarterly 32:1 (1990), 99-118: 104. 5. Miller's interest in the Salem witchcraft trials predated his confrontation with McCarthyism (see E. Miller Budick, â€Å"History and Other Spectres in The Crucible,† Arthur Miller, ed. Harold Bloom (New York, 1987), 127-28, but it is also clear from the Introduction to Miller's Collected Plays Vol 1 (New York, 1957) that he capitalized upon popular response and critical commentary which linked the two. Miller has been, it seems, a favoured critic on the subject of Arthur Miller. 6. In 1929 George L.Kittredge published a work called Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge) in which he remarked that â€Å"the doctrines of our forefathers differed [in regard to witchcraft] from the doctrines of the Roman and Anglican Church in no essential–one may safely ad d, in no particular† (21). In GynEcology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, 1978), Mary Daly says that during the European witch burnings–she does not deal with the Salem witch trials–Protestants â€Å"vied with and even may have surpassed their catholic counterparts in their fanaticism and cruelty† (185-86). . Cited by Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness, expanded edition (Philadelphia, 1992), 42. 8. Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford, 1987), 30-31. 9. â€Å"[N]ineteen women and men and two dogs were hanged, one man was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and 150 were imprisoned† (see Schlueter and Flanagan, 72). 10. â€Å"Remembering the Witches,† Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics (London, 1982), 16-17.See also the 1990 National Film Board production, The Burning Times, directed by Donna Read, which declares the Euro pean executions for witchcraft to have been a â€Å"women's holocaust. † Of the nine million people the film numbers among the burned, hanged, or otherwise disposed of, 85 per cent, it reports, were women. 11. The Burning Times discusses at length the place of women healers in Third-World cultures. 12. From Hawkins's review of the play in File on Miller, ed. Christopher Bigsby (London, 1988), 30. 3. Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller (New York, 1967), 60, 63. 14. Schlueter and Flanagan, 69. 15. Bernard Dukore, â€Å"Death of a Salesman† and â€Å"The Crucible†: Text and Performance (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London, 1989), 50. 16. Luce Irigaray, â€Å"This Sex Which Is Not One,† New French Feminisms: An Anthology, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (Amherst, 1980), 101. 17. The only critic I have read who has made comments even remotely similar to my own regarding Abigail is Neil Carson.In a 1982 book he remarks that â€Å"Abigail is portr ayed as such an obviously bad piece of goods that it takes a clear-eyed French critic to point out that Proctor was not only twice the age of the girl he seduced, but as her employer he was breaking a double trust† (75). Despite his insight, when it comes to explaining the effect of Miller's omission of detail regarding the early stages of the affair, he does not, I think, realize its full implications.He says that â€Å"Proctor's sense of guilt [seems] a little forced and perhaps not really justified,† but I think the choice was deliberately made so as to minimize John's guilt and emphasize his redemption as an existential man. Conversely, Abigail is more easily targeted (as the critics prove) for her active role in her seduction. 18. Daly, 187. 19. Carol Billman (â€Å"Women and the Family in American Drama,† Arizona Quarterly 36: 1 [1980], 35-48) discusses the study of â€Å"everyman† made in the family dramas of O'Neill, Williams, Albee, and Miller (al though she does not mention The Crucible): â€Å"women ecessarily occupy a central position, [but] little attention is paid to their subordination or suffering. †¦ Linda Loman [and I would add Elizabeth Proctor] †¦ suffers at least as much as her husband† (36-7). Victoria Sullivan and James Hatch, as well, have complained about the standards of review: â€Å"‘a complaining female protagonist is automatically less noble than Stanley Kowalski or Willy Loman †¦ [only] men suffer greatly'† (quoted in Billman, 37, emphasis added). 20. Carson, 66.In a play that is historically accurate in so many ways, it is significant to note that the affair between John and Abigail was invented by Miller (Dukore, 43). 21. Conrad and Schneider, 43. 22. I think that whether or not one sees the irony as intentional on Abby's part, she becomes more sympathetic. If intentional we can agree with her realization that John's hypocrisy was least when he was seducing her; he is a commonplace lecher. If Abigail is not cognizant of the extent of the irony of what she is saying, then she truly is too young–or too emotionally disturbed–to understand the implications of what she is doing.Carson again comes close to making a very astute judgment about Abigail's awareness of events going on around her: â€Å"It seems clear that we are to attribute at least a little of Abby's ‘wildness' and sensuality to her relationship with John, and to assume that the ‘knowledge' which Proctor put in Abigail's heart is not simply carnal, but also includes some awareness of the hypocrisy of some of the Christian women and covenanted men of the community† (68). Carson's insight, however, is limited by his belief in the â€Å"‘radical' side of Proctor's nature,† something with which modern audiences are sure to identify.The problem here is that the focus is once more removed from Abigail's plight to her vicarious participation in one more of John Proctor's admirable traits, for his â€Å"is not a simple personality like that of Rebecca Nurse† (68). 23. Dukore, 102. 24. Ibid. , 95. 25. One critic, who celebrates John's â€Å"playfulness† and who does not want his description of John as a liar to be taken in a pejorative sense, suggests that John and Abigail share a kindred spirit: â€Å"The physical attractiveness of Abby for John Proctor is obvious in the play, ut, I think, so is the passionate imagination which finds its outlet in one way in her and in another in Proctor† (William T. Liston, â€Å"John Proctor's Playing in The Crucible,† Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 20:4 (1979), 394-403: 403). John is a liar–that is part of his guilt–and to suggest that Abigail offers John something that Elizabeth does not condemns Elizabeth and exonerates John even more than Miller intends. 26. Carson, 69-70. 27. Ibid. , 75. 28. Leonard Moss, Arthur Miller, revi sed edition (Boston, 1980), 40, emphasis added. 29.I think it significant that the orphans are but one of the wasted possessions unattended to in Salem. The next part of the same sentence mentions abandoned cattle bellowing and rotted crops stinking. Miller has described a material and contemporary world. 30. Richard Hayes, â€Å"Hysteria and Ideology in The Crucible,† Twentieth Century Interpretations of â€Å"The Crucible,† ed. John H. Ferres (Englewood Cliffs, 1972), 34. I find it interesting and instructive that a 1953 review of the play uses the term to describe Arthur Kennedy's portrayal of John Proctor. 31. Aritha Van Herk, In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) (Edmonton, 1991), 14. 2. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Harmondsworth, 1984), 160. 33. Eric Mottram, â€Å"Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Sorcieres de Salem,† Twentieth Century Interpretations of â€Å"The Crucible,† 93, 94. 34. Daly, 215. Source Citation Schissel, Wendy. â€Å"Re(dis)covering the Witche s in Arthur Miller's The Crucible: A Feminist Reading. † Modern Drama 37. 3 (Fall 1994): 461-473. Rpt. in Drama Criticism. Vol. 31. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 27 July 2011. Document URL http://go. galegroup. com/ps/i. do? &id=GALE%7CH1420082425&v=2. 1&u=uq_stpatricks&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420082425

Understanding Leadership Styles

Understanding leadership styles within an organisation Set out here the various leadership styles ie Alimo Metcalfe The engaging leadership model. Also add afew more . The set the scene for LBE Ethos for leadership. Followed by my own style of management and what impact that as on the team. This assignment will firstly address the meaning of leadership, followed The Leadership role is said to be â€Å"the manner and approach of providing direction, implementing plans and motivating people† (Us Army handbook 1973Miltary Leadership) There are said to be three styles of leadership, 1, Authoritarian or Autocratic , Participative or democratic 3, Delegative or free reign Good leaders are said to use all three styles of leadership, with one being more dominate than the others. Leaders that tend not to be good at their role tend to use only one style. Authoritarian This style is used when the leader tells an employee what she/he wants done and how of this method is when you have all the information to solve the problem but there is little time and the employees are well motivated.This style should only be used on rare occasions. This can be used if staff needs to be instructed to complete a piece of work. Participative This leadership style involves the leader and one or more employee, in the decision making. However it is the leader that makes the final decision. This method is used when the leader has part of the information and the employees have the other. The leader does not have to know everything; hence the employee being a knowledgeable and skilful employee could assist the leader.Using this style is of a mutual benefit, as it allows the employee to feel part of a team and allows the leader to make better decisions. This style of managing is useful if you wish the staff to be involved in the decision making and allows the staff to be part of the team. It also enables the managers to utilise the skills, experience and expertise within the team. Delegativ e In this style the leader allows the employee to make the decision. The leader however remains responsible for the decisions that are made.This method can be used when the employees are able to analyse the situation and decides what is to e done and how to do it, it allows for the leader to set priorities and delegate certain tasks. This should be used when there is full trust and confidence in the employee. The forces that influence the style to be used are: * How much time is available * Are relationship based on respect and trust or on disrespect and mistrust. * Who has the information * How well employees are trained and how well they know the task. * Internal conflicts Stress levels * Type of task i. e. structured, unstructured, complicated, or simple. * Laws or established procedures. In using this style of managing is what you would want to have within your team, but this would be dependant on the member of staff, their skills, experience and whether they can be trusted to c arry out their task. The London Borough of Enfield has devised a document called the â€Å"Councils Leadership Competencies Framework, which describes the competencies and levels that they want their leaders to aspire to.The framework has been developed to reflect the council’s ethos and the major changes that are to take place within the council, with a shrinking budget and resources and an ever more rising demands on our services. The model that the council promotes is one that gives leaders the opportunity to analyses their leadership roles and responsibility. The London Borough of Enfield has thirteen competencies within the framework. These are arranged in four clusters, Personal Resources, Core Behaviours, Leadership and Technical and Professionals Skills. There is an expectation that as managers we will adopt this style of leadership. Views a

Foundation’s Edge CHAPTER TWENTY CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION Mayor Harla Branno had every reason for satisfaction. The state visit had not lasted long, but it had been thoroughly productive. She said, as though in deliberate attempt to avoid hubris, â€Å"We can't, of course, trust them completely.† She was watching the screen. The ships of the Fleet were, one by one, entering hyperspace and returning to their normal stations. There was no question but that Sayshell had been impressed by their presence, but they could not have failed to notice two things: one, that the ships had remained in Foundation space at all times; two, that once Branno had indicated they would leave, they were indeed leaving with celerity. On the other hand, Sayshell would not forget either that those ships could be recalled to the border at a day's notice – or less. It was a maneuver that had combined both a demonstration of power and a demonstration of goodwill. Kodell said, â€Å"Quite right, we can't trust them completely, but then no one in the Galaxy can be trusted completely and it is in the self-interest of Sayshell to observe the terms of the agreement. We have been generous.† Branno said, â€Å"A lot will depend on working out the details and I predict that will take months. The general brushstrokes can be accepted in a moment, but then come the shadings: just how we arrange for quarantine of imports and exports, how we weigh the value of their grain and cattle compared to ours, and so on.† â€Å"I know, but it will be done eventually and the credit will be yours, Mayor. It was a bold stroke and one, I admit, whose wisdom I doubted.† â€Å"Come, Liono. It was just a matter of the Foundation recognizing Sayshellian pride. They've retained a certain independence since early Imperial times. It's to be admired, actually.† â€Å"Yes, now that it will no longer inconvenience us.† â€Å"Exactly, so it was only necessary to bend our own pride to the point of making some sort of gesture to theirs. I admit it took an effort to decide that I, as Mayor of a Galaxy-straddling Federation, should condescend to visit a provincial star-grouping, but once the decision was made it didn't hurt too much. And it pleased them. We had to gamble that they would agree to the visit once we moved our ships to the border, but it meant being humble and smiling very broadly.† Kodell nodded. â€Å"We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.† â€Å"Exactly. – Who first said that?† â€Å"I believe it was in one of Eriden's plays, but I'm not sure. We can ask one of our literary lights back home.† â€Å"If I remember. We must speed the return visit of Sayshellians to Terminus and see to it that they are given the full treatment as equals. And I'm afraid, Liono, you will have to organize tight security for them. There is bound to be some indignation among our hotheads and it would not be wise to subject them to even slight and transient humiliation through protest demonstrations.† â€Å"Absolutely,† said Kodell. â€Å"It was a clever stroke, by the way, sending out Trevize.† â€Å"My lightning rod? He worked better than I thought he would, to be honest. He blundered his way into Sayshell and drew their lightning in the form of protests with a speed I could not have believed. Space! What an excellent excuse that made for my visit – concern lest a Foundation national in any way disturbed then and gratitude for their forbearance.† â€Å"Shrewd! – You don't think it would have been better, though, to have brought Trevize back with us?† â€Å"No. On the whole, I prefer him anywhere but at home. He would be a disturbing factor on Terminus. His nonsense about the Second Foundation served as the perfect excuse for sending him out and, of course, we counted on Pelorat to lead him to Sayshell, but I don't want him back, continuing to spread the nonsense. We can never tell what that might lead to.† Kodell chuckled. â€Å"I doubt that we can ever find anyone more gullible than an intellectual academic. I wonder how much Pelorat would have swallowed if we had encouraged him.† â€Å"Belief in the literal existence of the mythical Sayshellian Gaia was quite enough – but forget it. We will have to face the Council when we return and we will need their votes for the Sayshellian treaty. Fortunately we have Trevize's statement – voiceprint and all – to the effect that he left Terminus voluntarily. I will offer official regrets as to Trevize's brief arrest and that will satisfy the Council.† â€Å"I can rely on you for the soft soap, Mayor,† said Kodell dryly. â€Å"Have you considered, though, that Trevize may continue to search for the Second Foundation?† â€Å"Let him,† said Branno, shrugging, â€Å"as long as he doesn't do it on Terminus. It will keep him busy and get him nowhere. The Second Foundation's continued existence is our myth of the century, as Gaia is Sayshell's myth.† She leaned back and looked positively genial. â€Å"And now we have Sayshell in our grip – and by the time they see that, it will be too late for them to break the grip. So the Foundation's growth continues and will continue, smoothly and regularly.† â€Å"And the credit will be entirely yours, Mayor.† â€Å"That has not escaped my notice,† said Branno, and their ship slipped into hyperspace and reappeared in the neighborhood space of Terminus. Speaker Stor Gendibal, on his own ship again, had every reason for satisfaction. The encounter with the First Foundation had not lasted long, but it had been thoroughly productive. He had sent back his message of carefully muted triumph. It was only necessary – for the moment – to let the First Speaker know that all had gone well (as, indeed, he might guess from the fact that the general force of the Second Foundation had never had to be used after all). The details could come later on. He would describe how a careful – and very minor – adjustment to Mayor Branno's mind had turned her thoughts from imperialistic grandiosity to the practicality of commercial treaty; how a careful and rather long-distance – adjustment of the leader of the Sayshell Union had led to an invitation to the Mayor of a parley and how, thereafter, a rapprochement had been reached with no further adjustments at all with Compor returning to Terminus on his own ship, to see that the agreement would be kept. It had been, Gendibal thought complacently, almost a storybook example of large results brought about by minutely crafted mentalics. It would, he was sure, squash Speaker Delarmi flat and bring about his own elevation to First Speaker very soon after the presentation of the details at a formal meeting of the Table. And he did not deny to himself the importance of Sum Novi's presence, though that would not need to be stressed to the Speakers generally. Not only had she been essential to his victory, but she gave him the excuse he now needed for indulging his childish (and very human, for even Speakers are very human) need to exult before what he knew to be a guaranteed admiration. She did not understand anything that had happened, he knew, but she was aware that he had arranged matters to his liking and she was bursting with pride over that. He caressed the smoothness of her mind and felt the warmth of that pride. He said, â€Å"I could not have done it without you, Novi. It was because of you I could tell that the First Foundation – the people on the large ship†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Yes, Master, I know whom you mean.† â€Å"I could tell, because of you, that they had a shield, together with weak powers of the mind. From the effect on your mind, I could tell, exactly, the characteristics of both. I could tell how most efficiently to penetrate the one and deflect the other.† Novi said tentatively, â€Å"I do not understand exactly what it is you say, Master, but I would have done much more to help, if I could.† â€Å"I know that, Novi. But what you did was enough. It is amazing how dangerous they might have been. But caught now, before either their shield or their field had been developed more strongly, they could be stopped. The Mayor goes back now, the shield and the field forgotten, satisfied over the fact that she has obtained a commercial treaty with Sayshell that will make it a working part of the Federation. I don't deny that there is much more to do to dismantle the work they have done on shield and field – it is something concerning which we have been remiss – but it will be done.† He brooded about the matter and went on in a lower voice, â€Å"We took far too much for granted with the First Foundation. We must place them under closer supervision. We must knit the Galaxy closer together somehow. We must make use of mentalics to build a closer co-operation of consciousness. That would fit the Plan. I'm convinced of that and I'll see to it.† Novi said anxiously, â€Å"Master?† Gendibal smiled suddenly. â€Å"I'm sorry. I'm talking to myself. – Novi, do you remember Rufirant?† â€Å"That bone-skulled farmer who attacked you? I should say I do.† â€Å"I'm convinced that First Foundation agents, armed with personal shields, arranged that, together with all the other anomalies that have plagued us. Imagine being blind to a thing like that. But then, I was bemused into overlooking the First Foundation altogether by this myth of a mysterious world, this Sayshellian superstition concerning Gaia. There, too, your mind came in handy. It helped me determine that the source of that mentalic field was the warship and nothing else.† He rubbed his hands. Novi said timidly, â€Å"Master?† â€Å"Yes, Novi?† â€Å"Will you not be rewarded for what you have done?† â€Å"Indeed I will. Shandess will retire and I will be First Speaker. Then will come my chance to make us an active factor in revolutionizing the Galaxy.† â€Å"First Speaker?† â€Å"Yes, Novi. I will be the most important and the most powerful scholar of them all.† â€Å"The most important?† She looked woebegone. â€Å"Why do you make a face, Novi? Don't you want me to be rewarded?† â€Å"Yes, Master, I do. – But if you are the most important scholar of them all, you will not want a Hamishwoman near you. It would not be fitting.† â€Å"Won't I, though? Who will stop me?† He felt a gush of affection for her. â€Å"Novi, you'll stay with me wherever I go and whatever I am. Do you think I would risk dealing with some of the wolves we occasionally have at the Table without your mind always there to tell me, even before they know themselves, what their emotions might be – your own innocent, absolutely smooth mind. Besides†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He seemed startled by a sudden revelation, â€Å"Even aside from that, I – I like having you with me and I intend having you with me. – That is, if you are willing.† â€Å"Oh, Master,† whispered Novi and, as his arm moved around her waist, her head sank to his shoulder. Deep within, where the enveloping mind of Novi could scarcely be aware of it, the essence of Gaia remained and guided events, but it was that impenetrable mask that made the continuance of the great task possible. And that mask – the one that belonged to a Hamishwoman – was completely happy. It was so happy that Novi was almost reconciled for the distance she was from herself/them/all, and she was content to be, for the indefinite future, what she seemed to be. Pelorat rubbed his hands and said, with carefully controlled enthusiasm, â€Å"How glad I am to be back on Gaia.† â€Å"Umm,† said Trevize abstractedly. â€Å"You know what Bliss has told me? The Mayor is going back to Terminus with a commercial treaty with Sayshell. The Speaker from the Second Foundation is going back to Trantor convinced that he has arranged it – and that woman, Novi, is going with him to see to it that the changes that will bring about Galaxia are initiated. And neither Foundation is in the least aware that Gaia exists. It's absolutely amazing.† â€Å"I know,† said Trevize. â€Å"I was told all this, too. But we know that Gaia exists and we can talk.† â€Å"Bliss doesn't think so. She says no one would believe us, and we would know that. Besides, I, for one, have no intention of ever leaving Gaia.† Trevize was pulled out of his inner musing. He looked up and said, â€Å"What?† â€Å"I'm going to stay here. – You know, I can't believe it. Just weeks ago, I was living a lonely life on Terminus, the same life I had lived for decades, immersed in my records and my thoughts and never dreaming anything but that I would go to my death, whenever it might be, still immersed in my records and my thoughts and still living my lonely life – contentedly vegetating. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I became a Galactic traveler; I was involved with a Galactic crisis; and – do not laugh, Golan – I have found Bliss.† â€Å"I'm not laughing, Janov,† said Trevize, â€Å"but are you sure you know what you're doing?† â€Å"Oh yes. This matter of Earth is no longer important to me. The fact that it was the only world with a diverse ecology and with intelligent life has been adequately explained. The Eternals, you know.† â€Å"Yes, I know. And you're going to stay on Gaia?† â€Å"Absolutely. Earth is the past and I'm tired of the past. Gaia is the future.† â€Å"You're not part of Gaia, Janov. Or do you think you can become part of it?† â€Å"Bliss says that I can become somewhat a part of it – intellectually if not biologically. She'll help, of course.† â€Å"But since she is part of it, how can you two find a common life, a common point of view, a common interest†¦Ã¢â‚¬  They were in the open and Trevize looked gravely at the quiet, fruitful island, and beyond it the sea, and on the horizon, purpled by distance, another island – all of it peaceful, civilized, alive, and a unit. He said, â€Å"Janov, she is a world; you are a tiny individual. What if she gets tired of you? She is young†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Golan, I've thought of that. I've thought of nothing but that for days. I expect her to grow tired of me; I'm no romantic idiot. But whatever she gives me till then will be enough. She has already given me enough. I have received more from her than I dreamed existed in life. If I saw her no more from this moment on, I have ended the winner.† â€Å"I don't believe it,† said Trevize gently. â€Å"I think you are a romantic idiot and, mind you, I wouldn't want you any other way. Janov, we haven't known each other for long, but we've been together every moment for weeks and – I'm sorry if it sounds silly – I like you a great deal.† â€Å"And I, you, Golan,† said Pelorat. â€Å"And I don't want you hurt. I must talk to Bliss.† â€Å"No no. Please don't. You'll lecture her.† â€Å"I won't lecture her. It's not entirely to do with you – and I want to talk to her privately. Please, Janov, I don't want to do it behind your back, so grant me your willingness to have me talk to her and get a few things straight. If I am satisfied, I will give you my heartiest congratulations and goodwill – and I will forever hold my peace, whatever happens.† Pelorat shook his head. â€Å"You'll ruin things.† â€Å"I promise I won't I beg you†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Well, But do be careful, my dear fellow, won't you?† â€Å"You have my solemn word.† Bliss said, â€Å"Pel says you want to see me.† Trevize said, â€Å"Yes.† They were indoors, in the small apartment allotted to him. She sat down gracefully, crossed her legs, and looked up at him shrewdly, her beautiful brown eyes luminous and her long, dark hair glistening. She said, â€Å"You disapprove of me, don't you? You have disapproved of me from the start.† Trevize remained standing. He said, â€Å"You are aware of minds and of their contents. You know what I think of you and why.† Slowly Bliss shook her head. â€Å"Your mind is out of bounds to Gaia. You know that. Your decision was needed and it had to be the decision of a clear and untouched mind. When your ship was first taken, I placed you and Pel within a soothing field, but that was essential. You would have been damaged – and perhaps rendered useless for a crucial time – by panic or rage. And that was all. I could never go beyond that and I haven't – so I don't know what you're thinking.† Trevize said, â€Å"The decision I had to make has been made. I decided in favor of Gaia and Galaxia. Why, then, all this talk of a clear and untouched mind? You have what you want and you can do with me now as you wish.† â€Å"Not at all, Trev. There are other decisions that may be needed in the future. You remain what you are and, while you are alive, you are a rare natural resource of the Galaxy. Undoubtedly there are others like you in the Galaxy and others like you will appear in the future, but for now we know of you – and only you. We still cannot touch you.† Trevize considered. â€Å"You are Gaia and I don't want to talk to Gaia. I want to talk to you as an individual, if that has any meaning at all.† â€Å"It has meaning. We are far from existing in a common melt. I can block off Gaia for a period of time.† â€Å"Yes,† said Trevize. â€Å"I think you can. Have you now done so?† â€Å"I have now done so.† â€Å"Then, first, let me tell you that you have played games. You did not enter my mind to influence my decision, perhaps, but you certainly entered Janov's mind to do so, didn't you?† â€Å"Do you think I did?† â€Å"I think you did. At the crucial moment, Pelorat reminded me of his own vision of the Galaxy as alive and the thought drove me on to make my decision at that moment. The thought may have been his, but yours was the mind that triggered it, was it not?† Bliss said, â€Å"The thought was in his mind, but there were many thoughts there. I smoothed the path before that reminiscence of his about the living Galaxy – and not before any other thought of his. That particular thought, therefore, slipped easily out of his consciousness and into words. Mind you, I did not create the thought. It was there.† â€Å"Nevertheless, that amounted to an indirect tampering with the perfect independence of my decision, did it not?† â€Å"Gaia felt it necessary.† â€Å"Did it? – Well, it may make you feel better – or nobler – to know that although Janov's remark persuaded me to make the decision at that moment, it was the decision I think I would have made even if he had said nothing or if he had tried to argue me into a decision of a different kind. I want you to know that.† â€Å"I am relieved,† said Bliss coolly. â€Å"Is that what you wanted to tell me when you asked to see me?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"What else is there?† Now Trevize sat down in a chair he had drawn opposite her so that their knees nearly touched. He leaned toward her. â€Å"When we approached Gaia, it was you on the space station. It was you who trapped us; you who came out to get us; you who have remained with us ever since – except for the meal with Dom, which you did not share with us. In particular, it was you on the Far Star with us, when the decision was made. Always you.† â€Å"I am Gaia.† â€Å"That does not explain it. A rabbit is Gaia. A pebble is Gaia. Everything on the planet is Gaia, but they are not all equally Gaia. Some are more equal than others. Why you?† â€Å"Why do you think?† Trevize made the plunge. He said, â€Å"Because I don't think you're Gaia. I think you're more than Gaia.† Bliss made a derisive sound with her lips. Trevize kept to his course. â€Å"At the time I was making the decision, the woman with the Speaker†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"He called her Novi.† â€Å"This Novi, then, said that Gaia was set on its course by the robots that no longer exist and that Gaia was taught to follow a version of the Three Laws of Robotics.† â€Å"That is quite true.† â€Å"And the robots no longer exist?† â€Å"So Novi said.† â€Å"So Novi did not say. I remember her exact words. She said: ‘Gaia was formed thousands of years ago with the help of robots that once, for a brief time, served The human species and now serve them no more.† â€Å"Well, Trev, doesn't that mean they exist no more?† â€Å"No, it means they serve no more. Might they not rule instead?† â€Å"Ridiculous!† â€Å"Or supervise? Why were you there at the time of the decision? You did not seem to be essential. It was Novi who conducted matters and she was Gaia. What need of you? Unless†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Well? Unless?† â€Å"Unless you are the supervisor whose role it is to make certain that Gaia does not forget the Three Laws. Unless you are a robot, so cleverly made that you cannot be told from a human being.† â€Å"If I cannot be told from a human being, how is it you think that you can tell?† asked Bliss with a trace of sarcasm. Trevize sat back. â€Å"Do you not all assure me I have the faculty of being sure; of making decisions, seeing solutions, drawing correct conclusions. I don't claim this; it is what you say of me. Well, from the moment I saw you I felt uneasy. There was something wrong with you. I am certainly as susceptible to feminine allure as Pelorat is – more so, I should think – and you are an attractive woman in appearance. Yet not for one moment did I feel the slightest attraction.† â€Å"You devastate me.† Trevize ignored that. He said, â€Å"When you first appeared on our ship, Janov and I had been discussing the possibility of a nonhuman civilization on Gaia, and when Janov saw you, he asked, in his innocence, ‘Are you human?' Perhaps a robot must answer the truth, but I suppose it can be evasive. You merely said, ‘Don't I look human?' Yes, you look human, Bliss, but let me ask you again. Are you human?† Bliss said nothing and Trevize continued. â€Å"I think that even at that first moment, I felt you were not a woman. You are a robot and I could somehow tell. And because of my feeling, all the events that followed had meaning for me – particularly your absence from the dinner.† Bliss said, â€Å"Do you think I cannot eat, Trev? Have you forgotten I nibbled a shrimp dish on your ship? I assure you that I am able to eat and perform any of the other biological functions. – Including, before you ask, sex. And yet that in itself, I might as well tell you, does not prove that I am not a robot. Robots had reached the pitch of perfection, even thousands of years ago, where only by their brains were they distinguishable from human beings, and then only by those able to handle mentalic fields. Speaker Gendibal might have been able to tell whether I were robot or human, if he had bothered even once to consider me. Of course, he did not.† â€Å"Yet, though I am without mentalics, I am nevertheless convinced you are a robot† Bliss said, â€Å"But what if I am? I admit nothing, but I am curious. What if I am?† â€Å"You have no need to admit anything. I know you are a robot If I needed a last bit of evidence, it was your calm assurance that you could block off Gaia and speak to me as an individual. I don't think you could do that if you were part of Gaia – but you are not You are a robot supervisor and, therefore, outside of Gaia. I wonder, come to think of it, how many robot supervisors Gaia requires and possesses?† â€Å"I repeat: I admit nothing, but I am curious. What if I am a robot?† â€Å"In that case, what I want to know is: What do you want of Janov Pelorat? He is my friend and he is, in some ways, a child. He thinks he loves you; he thinks he wants only what you are willing to give and that you have already given him enough. He doesn't know – and cannot conceive – the pain of the loss of love or, for that matter, the peculiar pain of knowing that you are not human†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Do you know the pain of lost love?† â€Å"I have had my moments. I have not led the sheltered life of Janov. I have not had my life consumed and anesthetized by an intellectual pursuit that swallowed up everything else, even wife and child. He has. Now suddenly, he gives it all up for you. I do not want him hurt. I will not have him hurt. If I have served Gaia, I deserve a reward – and my reward is your assurance that Janov Pelorat's well-being will be preserved.† â€Å"Shall I pretend I am a robot and answer you?† Trevize said, â€Å"Yes. And right now.† â€Å"Very well, then. Suppose I am a robot, Trev, and suppose I am in a position of supervision. Suppose there are a few, a very few, who have a similar role to myself and suppose we rarely meet. Suppose that our driving force is the need to care for human beings and suppose there are no true humans beings on Gaia, because all are part of an overall planetary being. â€Å"Suppose that it fulfills us to care for Gaia – but not entirely. Suppose there is something primitive in us that longs for a human being in the sense that existed when robots were first formed and designed. Don't mistake me; I do not claim to be age-old (assuming I am a robot). I am as old as I told you I was or, at least, (assuming I am a robot) that has been the term of my existence. Still, (assuming I am a robot) my fundamental design would be as it always was and I would long to care for a true human being. â€Å"Pel is a human being. He is not part of Gaia. He is too old to ever become a true part of Gaia. He wants to stay on Gaia with me, for he does not have the feelings about me that you have. He does not think that I am a robot. Well, I want him, too. If you assume that I am a robot, you see that I would. I am capable of all human reactions and I would love him. If you were to insist I was a robot, you might not consider me capable of love in some mystic human sense, but you would not be able to distinguish my reactions from that which you would call love – so what difference would it make?† She stopped and looked at him – intransigently proud. Trevize said, â€Å"You are telling me that you would not abandon him?† â€Å"If you assume that I am a robot, then you can see for yourself that by First Law I could never abandon him, unless he ordered me to do so and I were, in addition, convinced that he meant it and that I would be hurting him more by staying than by leaving.† â€Å"Would not a younger man†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"What younger man? You are a younger man, but I do not conceive you as needing me in the same sense that Pel does, and, in fact, you do not want me, so that the First Law would prevent me from attempting to cling to you.† â€Å"Not me. Another younger man†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"There is no other. Who is there on Gaia other than Pel and yourself that would qualify as human beings in the non-Gaian sense?† Trevize said, more softly, â€Å"And if you are not a robot?† â€Å"Make up your mind,† said Bliss. â€Å"I say, if you are not a robot?† â€Å"Then I say that, in that case, you have no right to say anything at all. It is for myself and for Pel to decide.† Trev said, â€Å"Then I return to my first point. I want my reward and that reward is that you will treat him well. I won't press the point of your identity. Simply assure me, as one intelligence to another, that you will treat him well.† And Bliss said softly, â€Å"I will treat him well – not as a reward to you, but because I wish to. It is my earnest desire. I will treat him well.† She called â€Å"Pel!† And again, â€Å"Pel!† Pelorat entered from outside, â€Å"Yes, Bliss.† Bliss held out her hand to him. â€Å"I think Trev wants to say something.† Pelorat took her hand and Trevize then took the doubled hand in his two. â€Å"Janov,† he said, â€Å"I am happy for both of you.† Pelorat said, â€Å"Oh, my dear fellow.† Trevize said, â€Å"I will probably be leaving Gaia. I go now to speak to Dom about that. I don't know when or if we will meet again, Janov, but, in any case, we did well together.† â€Å"We did well,† said Pelorat, smiling. â€Å"Good-bye, Bliss, and, in advance, thank you.† â€Å"Good-bye, Trev.† And Trevize, with a wave of his hand, left the house. Dom said, â€Å"You did well, Trev. – But then, you did as I thought you would.† They were once more sitting over a meal, as unsatisfactory as the first had been, but Trevize did not mind. He might not be eating on Gaia again. He said, â€Å"I did as I thought you would, but not, perhaps, for the reason you thought I would.† â€Å"Surely you were sure of the correctness of your decision.† â€Å"Yes, I was, but not because of any mystic grip I have on certainty. If I chose Galaxia, it was through ordinary reasoning – the sort of reasoning that anyone else might have used to come to a decision. Would you care to have me explain?† â€Å"I most certainly would, Trev.† Trevize said, â€Å"There were three things I might have done. I might have joined the First Foundation, or joined the Second Foundation, or joined Gaia. â€Å"If I had joined the First Foundation, Mayor Branno would have taken immediate action to establish domination over the Second Foundation and over Gaia. If I had joined the Second Foundation, Speaker Gendibal would have taken immediate action to establish domination over the First Foundation and over Gaia. In either case, what would have taken place would have been irreversible – and if either were the wrong solution, it would have been irreversibly catastrophic. â€Å"If I joined with Gaia, however, then the First Foundation and the Second Foundation would each have been left with the conviction of having won a relatively minor victory. All would then have continued as before, since the building of Galaxia, I had already been told, would take generations, even centuries. â€Å"Joining with Gaia was my way of temporizing, then, and of making sure that there would remain time to modify matters – or even reverse them – if my decision were wrong.† Dom raised his eyebrows. His old, almost cadaverous face remained otherwise expressionless. He said in his piping voice, â€Å"And is it your opinion that your decision may turn out wrong?† Trevize shrugged. â€Å"I don't think so, but there is one thing I must do in order that I might know. It is my intention to visit Earth, if I can find that world.† â€Å"We will certainly not stop you if you wish to leave us, Trev†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I do not fit on your world.† â€Å"No more than Pel does, yet you are as welcome to remain as he is. Still, we will not hold you. – But tell me, why do you wish to visit Earth?† Trevize said, â€Å"I rather think you understand.† â€Å"I do not.† â€Å"There is a piece of information you withheld from me, Dom. Perhaps you had your reasons, but I wish you had not.† Dom said, â€Å"I do not follow you.† â€Å"Look, Dom, in order to make my decision, I used my computer and for a brief moment I found myself in touch with the minds of those about me – Mayor Branno, Speaker Gendibal, Novi. I caught glimpses of a number of matters that, in isolation, meant little to me, as, for example, the various effects Gaia, through Novi, had produced on Trantor – effects that were intended to maneuver the Speaker into going to Gaia.† â€Å"Yes?† â€Å"And one of those things was the clearing from Trantor's library of all references to Earth.† â€Å"The clearing of references to Earth?† â€Å"Exactly. So Earth must be important – and not only does it appear that the Second Foundation must know nothing about it, but that I must not, either. And if I am to take the responsibility for the direction of Galactic development, I do not willingly accept ignorance. Would you consider telling me why it was so important to keep knowledge of Earth hidden?† Dom said solemnly, â€Å"Trev, Gaia knows nothing about such clearance. Nothing!† â€Å"Are you telling me that Gaia is not responsible?† â€Å"It is not responsible.† Trevize thought for a while, the tip of his tongue moving slowly and meditatively over his lips. â€Å"Who was responsible, then?† â€Å"I don't know. I can see no purpose in it.† The two men stared at each other and then Dom said, â€Å"You are right. We had seemed to have reached a most satisfactory conclusion, but while this point remains unsettled, we dare not rest. – Stay a while with us and let us see what we can reason out. Then you can leave, with our full help.† â€Å"Thank you,† said Trevize. THE END

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Haitian culture - Research Paper Example For instance they think that an angry spirit, most probably enlisted by a foe, causes physical deformity. Haitians freely touch friends and family (Colin, 2006). Healthcare providers can freely touch them, in fact, they might touch healthcare providers to let them know that they are being spoken to (Colin, 2006). They have a closely knit family and extended family system. Normally three generations lived together under one roof in small homes. They have a male dominant social system where the men make family decisions. Behind the scenes than men are highly influential (Colin, 2006). But in case of a healthcare situation the spokesperson can be the father, mother or any other person of that family. Haitian culture is based on male chauvinism (Colin, 2006), where men considered themselves free of household responsibilities and childcare. They are expected to be the sole providers and the authority figure that disciplines the children. The women in a family are the real backbone as they manage all operation. Fathers are usually the distant figures that rule with authority. However, there is a changing trend among Haitians living in the United States. Many intergenerational conflicts are occurring with parents and their children hold opposing views. Sex, peer affiliations and roles within a family are among the top issues for such conflict. The females of a family provided caring role. Healthcare providers need to understand this information because certain traditional norms are important to understand to be prepared when taking care of Haitian families. Among family and friends, Haitians keep very close personal space (Colin, 2006). With strangers however, they keep a distance while talking or during any other form of communication. Healthcare providers can stand close to the patients. Haitians are very hospitable people. They would offer the most comfortable space to the guests. The Haitian culture represents the tribal mindset.

Brief a case Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Brief a case - Assignment Example She appealed to the Supreme Court California, which reversed the sentence. The legal question presented to the Supreme Court was if it was known that a certain group of defendants was negligent but not clear specifically who was directly responsible, can a plaintiff sue the main companies involved as per the market share statistics? The Supreme Court determined that the plaintiff could recover against the manufacturers that are already known with respect to the market share concept. The Supreme Court added that for such a case to suffice, the plaintiff must present a number of the main distributors. However, if the defendant could prove that they were not responsible for the harm caused, then they could be dismissed from the case. The reasoning used here was that the defendants should not be let off simply because the plaintiff does not have a way of identifying those responsible. In addition, in such sensitive cases as medication, the consumer is deemed helpless to protect themselves from any harm that may come from the drugs that they take. The defendant s would also be in a better position to bear the cost of an injury that results from manufacturing of a defective drug. This was a trademark infringement case where Coca-Cola Company was seeking to enjoin Koke Company of America from continuing to use the word ‘Koke’ in their products. On the defense, Koke maintained that using Coca-Cola name in its brands the Coca-Cola Company represented usage of cocaine in its products. From the side of the Coca-Cola Company, it should retain the usage of this name. This came as a result of increased sales by the Coca-Cola Company implying that this company did not want to share any work which sounded similar to the one it used (Clarkson et al. 157). The case was ruled against Coca-Cola Company, which appealed to the U.S Supreme Court. The legal question presented before